Library is a major hub where all the sources of information are kept and accessible to public

or specific community for referencing or borrowing purposes. According to Allen (1984),

library is usually a physical building or room, or a virtual space, or both. In a library, the
collection may be include books, periodicals, newspapers, manuscripts, films, maps, prints,
documents, microform, CDs, cassettes, videotapes, DVDs, e-books, audiobooks, databases
and other formats.
A library is organized and for various purpose and usually well maintained by an
institution, a public body, a corporation, or a private. The libraries usually serves the
individuals who choose not to or cannot afford to purchase the collections of resources, the
materials which no individuals are expected to have, or the ones who need the professional
assistance with their research. Nowadays, there are so many libraries that serve almost every
individuals need on seeking knowledge. This is accordance to the existence of new
technologies such as computers and e-books. These technologies, have been a growing
phenomenon for quite some time where everyone did their reading or seeking for information
through the computer and the internet. It is clear that this e-books trend has made a
remarkable progress. The Association of American Publishers reports 6.4% of books were
published in electronic formats in 2010, up from 0.6% in 2008, with some specific categories,
such as adult fiction, seeing more activity with e-books representing 13.6% (Marshall, 2011).
This has made the selling of the printed books are in express drop. Recently, the Borders retail
chain closed its remaining outlets due to the rapid growth of e-books availability in the
internet. Due to the continuation of budget cuts to the printed books, most of the libraries
around the world decide to add or change their offered service to become a bookless library in
order to survive in the digital age.
For some reasons users or readers tend to use the gadgets and online resources such as
e-journal and e-books from the internet because they want to find the latest and up-to-date
information that they need. This is because they felt that the library does not provide them the
latest, up-to-date or newly published books. For them, the available books in the library is
out-dated and mostly published in 90s era and they maybe thought that those out-dated
version of books contains less information in the specific field. It is very important to know,
learn and gain new knowledge as well as information since todays world involve a lot of new
studies, experiments and researches conducted by professional, educators, scientists,
researchers accordance to the specific field. Through the studies, researches and experiments
being conducted by the professional in their field, they are likely to find new methods,

strategies, results, information and knowledge to be shared with others. In order to share it
publicly, those new and up-to-date information is published in the form of books.
The librarians play a vital role of getting information on latest and up-to-date books
from various publishers for their library. As a librarian, one must have the great and wide
knowledge or skills on how to get information of books from other countries and how to
measure the certain books whether it is the latest book and not limit themselves by only
contacting the local publisher, they also must make their resources vary from other countries
internationally. Thus, the librarian can keep updating the books in the library so that the
readers or users are able to access the valid and reliable information from the books which
able to help them in their assignments, works or pleasure reading.
In addition, the information published in books are more reliable and valid compared
to information provided in the internet. This is because before the information being
published in the form of books, it has been checked or analysed thoroughly by other
professionals in order to make sure the information in correct, reliable and valid. Furthermore,
the manuscripts and old historical transcripts were printed on papers and cannot be converted
into e-journal. This is because to avoid the manuscripts or the transcripts being edited by
irresponsible users by using digital software. Nowadays, there are a lot of software and digital
devices that can be used to change the fact in the manuscripts, transcripts as well as the
journal illegally with their own purposes. Not all of the results of the research can be found in
the form of electronic version because those results can be manipulated and no longer original
due to the changes made by users illegally. Thus, printed or book the manuscripts as well as
the transcripts is the best way to keep its originality.
Besides that, if the libraries spent more on technology, they will also lose its real
function where users borrow, read and find information from the books available. Nowadays,
users only use the library during examination week just because it is the quietest place to
study for examination and the facilities provided such as tables, chairs, air-conditioners give
them a comfortable place to study. For normal days, the library is used for group discussion
and held a class or courses in the rooms provided in the library. This show that the library is
not being used as a place to read books, find information as well as borrow the books.
Something must be done by the organization, the institution or the individuals that taking care
of the library to make their centre of knowledge become an attraction to readers, researchers
and other individuals.

In the era of modernisation, people uses gadgets and other electronic devices to make
their works become easier especially for students to complete their assignments or tasks given
by their institution. Because it is easy to find the answers and information from the internet
through e-journal or e-books, there are high tendency of the students to copy directly from the
online resources into their assignments or tasks and this act is known as cyber-plagiarism.
According to Lawren Lessig (2002), plagiarism is writings or ideas of another person and
represent it as own ideas without permission. Even though plagiarism is not illegal but all
schools and universities have disciplinary act to against it in the realm of education because it
brings impact to students academic performance as well as their thinking and learning skills.
It would be a disadvantage to the students in the future because they did not read through the
information or did not get enough input for learning and the aim was just to get the tasks done
in a short time. As the results, they did not know what they have learned from the tasks given.
Thus, it affects the academic performances of the students and students are not being honest in
completing their tasks and also dishonest with the teachers, lecturers, schools as well the
institutions. Therefore, online resources such as e-book encourage students to plagiarism their
works more than the books.
By using the books available in the library, students are encouraged to read and go
through the book to find the information and understand what is written. From their
understanding, they will write down their own thought of the knowledge gained into their
works or paraphrase as well as cite the information they found from the books. So, there will
be no issue regarding plagiarism. Reading books makes the students more encouraged to gain
knowledge as well as improve their thinking skills compare to referring to e-book and ejournals because there are tendency for them to commit cyber-plagiarism. Reading books give
more positive effects compared to reading e-book or e-journal using the gadgets such as
tablets and smartphone. This became an issue because reading online resources or e-book will
affect the quality of sleep and body clock compared to reading books.
According to James Gallagher (2014), a health editor on BBC News Website, e-book
has been labelled as sleep disrupting by Prof Charles Czeisler. This is because the gadgets
used have other applications that users can access while reading e-book or e-journal which
awake users longer than reading books before sleeping. Lack of sleeping increase the risk of
cardiovascular disease, metabolic disease such as obesity, cancer and diabetes. Reading a lot
of e-books may harm the users body clock in which a body has an internal clock of the day
and night by using the light to alarm the body about the time. Smartphones and tablets has the

blue light in which it tell the body to decrease or prevent the melatonin hormone from being
produced by body. The lack of melatonin hormone in our body caused human take a longer
time to fall asleep and become tired when wake up in the next morning because having little
time to have deep sleep.
A study about reading has been carried out by University of Sussex which they found
that by reading for just only six minutes, the stress level can go down as much as 68% (The
Telegraph, 2009). Reading e-books and e-journals definitely will affect the quality of sleep,
and the stress level obviously will not decreasing. In fact, it will increase from time to time
because the users do not have enough sleep. The stress could be cause by the blue light and
less physical movement of body. Users of smartphones and tablets used one finger to scroll
down and up while reading and it can be bored to certain individual. Compare to reading book
in which more physical movement especially finger and arms in which readers use both hands
to hold the books and flip the pages. Hence, reading books is good for health and learning
compared reading from the online resources or e-book. For this issue, it would be better to
invest for more books in the library to be borrowed or read by users instead of investing in
buying electronic devices as books can maintain and improve ones health and interest to read.
Using e-journal or e-books in the realm of education cost quite amount of money to be
invested on. For instance is the installation of information communication technology (ICT)
such as computers, tabs, speakers, projectors and others facilities in the library for the users to
access the online resources cost the librarian a large amount of money. In fact, not only for the
installation but also for the services and maintenance to be paid to the technicians. With the
current economy and the budget restrictions, the use of ICT will be a burden to the librarian to
pay for those services and maintenance monthly or yearly. Besides, some of the e-journal or ebook cannot be accessed freely and must be purchased online by the users or the librarians.
Issuing about cost of maintenance, services, purchases and others, the librarians may cut the
cost by buying up-to-date books and moreover, books do not need any further maintenance or
services monthly or yearly as computers. Wrap the books nicely would help to preserve the
book for longer use and it just cost a little compare to the purchasing of computers.
Besides that, whenever the library uses the computers or tabs for online access, the
graph of electric bills will draw up because every electronic devices need electricity to power
up. Even though books are thick and heavy to be carried around, but it does not require
batteries or electric to function. Users or readers can use it anytime and anywhere without
worrying about how long the battery will last or where they can find a place to plug in their

charger. Reading e-book has its limitation because not all e-book or e-journal can be accessed
offline unless the e-book is purchased and can be viewed offline. Obviously, the users cannot
access to the online e-book or e-journal if the users go to a place with no coverage of internet.
But, books can be read anywhere even though there is no internet coverage and no batteries
are needed. The readers just need the light to have a clear view while reading the book.
Hence, books has more practicality compare to e-book or e-journal in terms of electricity and
its limitations. It is make sense for library to invest more on buying books since it is practical
than using technology to access for information.
From another perspective, books in the library are very useful for students who cannot
afford to buy computers or internet to access online resources and they rely fully on the books
as the sources of information. A place to find information and books for their assignments and
tasks is only the library nearest them. A librarian should consider users and students
backgrounds as well as their socio-economic status especially users from rural area where
they are mostly come from poor family or low socio-economy status and hardly get the
internet connection to access the sources of information. Library is the only opportunity for
them to borrow books as it is their only resources for learning and reading. Besides, the more
interesting books to be read, the more users will visit library to read for information as well as
read for pleasure. At the same time, librarians are able to nurture the reading culture among
the citizens implicitly.
As a conclusion, if the libraries preserve and prolonged the availability of books, it will gave a
great opportunity the libraries to serve their clients which came from various place locally and
internationally. As books in the library are more useful compared to the e-books and ejournals, it will benefit the researchers and the students who seek for authentic and original
sources of information. Throughout the spending of books and printed materials, the libraries
does not have to spend more on computers and other technologies as it encourages the users
or readers to start rely on the e-book and e-journal as their primary resources to get
information. Therefore, the librarians, institutions and individuals who taking care of libraries
around the world should take action immediately by investing more on books to heighten the
level of their libraries to be seen by the group and individuals seek for knowledge.

Allen, R. E., ed. (1984). The Pocket Oxford Dictionary of Current English. Oxford: Clarendon
Press; p. 421
Breeding, Marshall. (2011). Ebook lending: asserting the value of libraries as the future of
books unfolds. Computers in Libraries 31 (9), 24-28.
Gallagher, James.

(2014). Night

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Lessig, Lawrence (2002). Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to
Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. New York: Vintage.
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